GRAND RAPIDS – Failing schools are not limited to Detroit, and it will take changing the culture in the classroom and the community, said the man tapped to lead the new statewide system aimed at turning around the worst-performing programs.

John Covington, chancellor of the Education Achievement Authority, met with educators and community representatives Wednesday at Union School, looking for input on how the authority should work with the lowest performing 5 percent of the Michigan schools.

“The goal is to make sure our children have a quality education no matter where they live in the state,” Covington said after addressing about 50 people, asking their opinions on what should be the authority's mission and core values, and how schools might be different than traditional programs.

Covington said the plan is not necessarily to take over the failing schools, but to empower principals and teachers to make changes, offering them support “while under uncompromising accountability.”

“The work should be toward a change in culture,” he said, saying those changes should be the neighborhoods as well as the classrooms.

That's an admittedly difficult task, he said, and looks to enlist the support of businesses and faith leaders in addition to foundations and other groups that can offer services and resources.

Covington said he recently visited New Orleans, which created a similar reform authority after Hurricane Katrina devastated the parish school system, allowing state and federal leaders to essentially build a new system, folding the most-struggling schools into a new authority.

Some of the city's schools reopened as community service hubs, offering programs aimed at families as well as students.

“I liked seeing the foundations and the community groups coming together, looking to attack poverty and the problems it creates,” he said.

Detroit schools last year were branded “a national disgrace” in a documentary by veteran journalist Dan Rather. Covington, previously the school chief in Kansas City, Mo., said he's not sure that's a fair description of Michigan's largest school system.

“I don't want to take anything away from Dan Rather or the things he uncovered,” Covington said. “But he could have been talking about schools in Washington, D.C., Birmingham, Ala., Kansas City or any other city. These are problems that we are finding in our city schools across the country and across the state.”